Will try our best to halt VAT imposition on metro rail: DMTCL

Metro rail authorities will ask the National Board of Revenue (NBR) to reconsider its decision to impose 15 percent VAT on metro rail fare from July 1.

"We will try our best to halt the decision. There is still some time, so we will go to the highest level in this regard," Mohammad Abdur Rouf, company secretary of Dhaka Mass Transit Company Ltd (DMTCL), the operating agency of metro rail, told The Daily Star today.

NRB today wrote to DMTCL saying they will not extend the exemption of 15 percent VAT, which was supposed to be imposed from December 28, 2022 when the metro rail service launched, after June 30.

Contacted, Rouf said they were yet to formally receive NBR's letter but heard about it.

He said NBR last year proposed to lift the exemption but deferred it following DMTCL's request.

When NBR gave the same proposal this year again, they once again requested them not to impose VAT as it would have impact on passenger fair, he said.

He said metro rail is public transport and people of all walks of life use it. So, it would not be fair to impose VAT only because metro rail is an air-conditioned service, he said.

In case of conventional trains, people have the option to use non-AC seats, but the air-conditioning is built into the metro rail service, he added.

"So, we are still opposing the decision and we will try our best to halt the decision," he added.

The country's first metro rail service was opened to public partially in December 2022 and fully from September last year.

Around 2.95 lakh passengers used the trains daily before Ramadan and earned around Tk 1.5 crore daily.

The fair from Uttara to Motijheel is Tk 100 and minimum fare is Tk 20.